


amid the garbage and the flowers

by moralwhatsits



Series: Kal Pelletier [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I keep making edits to chapter one sorry, Kal Pelletier, Rating May Change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-03
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-21 18:17:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9561155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moralwhatsits/pseuds/moralwhatsits
Summary: Following a firefight, the Sole Survivor and MacCready are finally forced to have a serious conversation about feelings. It's not their strong suit.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has not been subject to any kind of peer review and is also the first thing I've written in years, so please have mercy.

“So there I was, holding a gun on this assh-- jerk, and all of a sudden the guy who hired me comes sprinting out in nothing but a towel…” Mac surreptitiously shifted his pack as he talked. It had been a long day already, and they were running late getting back to Sanctuary because the Boss had overheard Abraham Finch shooting his stupid mouth off, _again_ , and had felt the need to have a “friendly chat” before they headed home. Kal’s steely-eyed scowl had mostly disappeared by the time she and the white-faced Abraham had emerged from behind the shack that the Finches called home, but as they headed west into the sinking sun her expression faded from stern to tired. There was a tiny, ashamed corner of Mac’s mind that was gratified-- the Boss let her “aloof death machine” act slip in front of exactly no one. No one who didn’t have four legs and a big fluffy tail, that is. So, because he was a total waste of a human being and had no idea how to make her feel better, Mac was cracking stupid jokes instead of actually helping in any way.

The Boss had been listening to his dumb story willingly enough, even if she was mostly just rolling her eyes, but she abruptly stopped short and barked, “Mac, cover!” A shot pinged off a nearby car as she flung herself behind it. Mac ducked behind the nearest available cover, one of those tiny, stupid-looking bubble cars. Dogmeat hovered at Kal’s side, growling.

Mac swore as a supermutant charged around what the Boss referred to as “the shittiest fucking roundabout in all of Massachusetts.” Frankly, this was getting ridiculous. Never in his life had he encountered so many random groups of minigun-toting supermutants as in the past few months of traveling with the Boss, and he had grown up next to a whole vault full of the damn things.

“Jesus, Boss, it’s like they can smell you or something!” he shouted over the clatter of the miniguns. She looked away from the mutants for a moment to flash him a wild grin.

“Please, I bathe more than anyone else in the damn Commonwealth!” she called back, lining up her first target.

“Yeah Boss, I think it’s the smell of soap that’s confusing them!” Mac got an ugly green head square in his crosshairs, exhaled, and squeezed the trigger. The head disappeared into a shower of gory detritus, but Mac had already shifted to a new target. The supermutants had to be closing on them, but Mac’s line of sight was blocked by foliage and a wrecked bus. Leaning over the tiny car at a different angle, he managed to get off a shot that struck one of the mutants in the shoulder, felling it at least momentarily. Bullets pelted into the car near him as one of the minigun wielders caught sight of him, and he hurriedly ducked back behind it. Mac had counted four plus at least one hound, but he couldn’t tell how many might be out of his view.

“Boss, how many we looking at?” he yelled, risking a glance away from the advancing horde. The Boss was leaning out from behind the hideous pink car she was using for cover. She took a shot, swore under her breath, and shouted back,

“Two miniguns, three melee, and a hound!” A flying piece of shrapnel had scored a thin red line across her jaw, and blood had begun to trickle down her neck. Three each, not counting Dogmeat’s help. Things could be better. Mac blind-fired over the cars, and heard a satisfying screech of pain from one of the mutants. He risked a decent look out of cover, and took the last shot in his mag at the hound. 

With a shout of, “Reloading!”, Mac ducked fully back into cover. Dogmeat sprinted into the fray, snarling, as he crammed a fresh magazine into his rifle. Now that the mutants had closed the distance, the Boss had switched to her revolver. As Mac tried to wedge himself into a decent angle between the two cars, he saw a supermutant bearing a board full of rusty nails coming up on her seven. Shit, from his angle the Boss was just too much in the way to risk a shot. Not considering anything but her, Mac shouted, “Kal, duck!” and stepped completely out from cover. She reacted almost instantly, but the board still caught a glancing blow off her head and lodged in her left shoulder. Kal dropped, and so did the mutant as Mac’s bullet found its mark. Then he heard the whir of a minigun spinning up and brought his rifle around a moment too late. 

\--------

Kal forced herself to her knees, swaying. Her head screamed at her with every tiny movement, and her vision warped and blurred. Belatedly, she remembered the supermutant who’d scrambled her brain and tried to grope for her dropped revolver, only to be met with a jolt of pain and a virtually immobile left arm. A green blur loomed in her vision, but the whirring of the supermutant’s minigun was cut short by a snarl as the figure was jerked to the side. Kal groped frantically for her gun, clumsy with her right hand. After an eternity, her hand closed on the barrel. Kal braced herself against the car and wedged her right arm between her knees, muzzily hoping she wasn’t going to get smacked in the face with a hot gun. Once it was angled generally in the direction of the supermutant, Kal barked, “Dogmeat, now!”

The blurry figure staggered as Dogmeat released the supermutant and hopefully got the hell out of the way. Kal fired until the revolver clicked empty, her skull ringing with echoes of the blast. “Dogmeat, buddy, is it dead?” she croaked. Dogmeat whuffed an affirmative and trotted over to lick her face. Kal slumped back against the car as the cacophony in her head began to overwhelm her, until a tiny thread of a thought spiraled up out of her mind. Where was Mac? He hadn’t made a sound since warning her, hadn’t helped her with the last supermutant or called out for help of his own. Oh shit, he had to be down. Leaning heavily on the car, she dragged herself to her feet. “Mac?” she grated out, her voice rough with pain. “Mac, shit, say something.” The sun was just beginning to sink into dusk, as if seeing wasn’t hard enough without everything being the same damn color. “Dogmeat, buddy, where’s Mac?”

Kal felt teeth close gently on the left sleeve of her coat. Mac had fallen on his side in the narrow juncture between the two cars they had been using as cover, leaving barely any room for her to get in and help him. She stepped as carefully as possible over his legs, but still half fell on her ass at his side, gritting her teeth and grimly ignoring the stabs of pain that caused. Nothing she could do about the damn shoulder without Mac, anyway. 

Kal rolled Mac onto his back and winced. Blood had stained dark blossoms into his duster-- at least three that she could see. Clumsy with her off hand, she groped awkwardly in her left boot, finally freeing her emergency stimpak, and injected Mac as Dogmeat came trotting back up. Oh, he’d gotten her med pouch out of her bag. What a good boy. Kal took the bag from him, frowning as she did. It seemed far too light. Oh, right. Kingsport Lighthouse had been hit hard by those Children of Atom fucks yesterday, and she’d left supplies for Dan Finch to run over in the morning, including most of her meds. 

There was still a blood pack and a few stims, thank god. She used another stimpak on him and got to work on the blood pack. After a great deal of muddled fiddling, she chased the air out of the tubing and carefully hung the blood pack on a jagged bit of car. Focusing as hard as she could, Kal slipped the needle into a vein in the crook of his right arm. Well, it was probably a vein. Gray seeped over her vision as she let her focus relax. Fuzzily, Kal realized that she’d never even bothered to take Mac’s pulse. It certainly would be a waste of all those meds if he'd been dead this whole time, wouldn't it? As she leaned over him to do so, the world skated out from under her.

\--------

Mac slipped gently back towards consciousness, new sensations gradually creeping into his awareness. For one, he was lying on some very hard ground and there was something poking him in the back. Gravel, maybe? Why was he lying in the middle of the road? He heard Dogmeat whine, but before he could process that fact, the introduction of a cold nose to his ear jolted him straight back to wakefulness. 

“What the heck, buddy?” Mac yelped, flinging his hands up to defend himself. Or, at least, he tried to. Something was pinning his arms down. He craned his neck up to see what was on top of him and bolted upright. Kal was slumped across his stomach, one bloodied hand extended above her. His heart stalled in his chest. Mac didn’t remember anything after taking out that mutant who’d nailed her with the board, but going by the big bloody patch right below his collarbone, he’d been shot at least once. As carefully as possible, he shifted her so she was facing upright in his lap. His right elbow twinged as her head rolled limply across his arm. Mac yanked the IV needle out without even fully noticing it; his entire lower torso was drenched with blood, black in the bare scrap of light remaining in the sky. Given that he was only mildly achy and not in hideous pain and/or dead, the blood had to be hers. Panicked, he fumbled her scarf aside and sagged with relief to find a pulse, however quick and thready. Shit. He couldn’t see a thing, and also couldn’t risk a light given current conditions. But he also couldn’t leave the Boss bleeding out on the pavement while he went for help. And Dogmeat was a freakishly smart dog, but Mac really didn’t think highly of Abraham Finch’s chances of interpreting his Lassie schtick.

“Dogmeat, any chance you can sniff out a place for us to lay low for the night?” Dogmeat gave a quiet bark and trotted off a few feet before turning back to look at Mac. Sheesh, was there anywhere Dogmeat hadn’t been? He had to be some kind of freaky mutant superdog. Mac propped Kal up against one of the cars, dragged her over his shoulders in a fireman's carry, and stood. He had the meds bag awkwardly clutched in one of his hands, but he’d have to come back for the rest later. The Boss couldn’t kill him for losing her precious Reba if she didn’t wake up. Pushing that thought firmly out of his mind, he followed Dogmeat into the brush.

\--------

Kal woke with a start, instinctively trying to scramble away from anyone and anything in her immediate vicinity. Hands grabbed her forearms, preventing her from rolling away but not actually hurting her, and someone said, “Woah, woah, Boss, cool it. It’s just me.” She blinked a few times and Mac’s face came into focus, looming above her. 

Relaxing, she began to ask, “Mac, what---”

“Hang on,” he interjected, and she wasn’t quite all there yet but she thought she detected a certain edge to his voice. “I need to make sure you don’t still have a concussion. Tell me what you remember.”

Kal frowned, groping for what had been happening before she’d woken up on this couch. “Er… supermutants? At that fucking roundabout. You got _shot_!” She sat abruptly upright and turned, hands reaching to uncover where the wound in his chest had been. “Are you alright? What happened?”

Mac grabbed her forearms again, fending her off. “Obviously, Boss, how the he- how do you think I got us here?” he said, sounding decidedly peevish. “Now be careful with the sudden movements, would you? I’m not sure you’re done healing yet.”

Kal scoffed in disbelief. “ _I’m_ not done healing yet? Mac, you got shot! Three times!” She poked accusingly at his collarbone with one impeded hand. “All I had was a concussion, and now that there aren’t four of you I’m pretty sure we’re good on that front.”

“ _Just_ a concussion?” Mac stared incredulously at her, then released one of her arms to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Boss, I woke up to you bleeding out onto my chest! When I got you in here you were _gray_! With blood loss, in case that didn’t make it through your stupid dented skull!” His voice was rising dangerously in pitch as his rant began to hit its stride. 

Taken aback by his sudden vehemence, for a moment all Kal could do was stare. Mac wasn’t emotionally reserved by any means, but the only time she’d seen him anywhere near this upset had been at Med-Tek. And honestly, bleeding out? He was the one who’d gotten himself riddled with bullet holes, not her. Temper flaring at his _complete_ lack of regard for nearly dying, Kal snapped, “Bleeding out? Mac, I know head wounds bleed a lot, but I hardly think that compares to _getting shot_.”

Mac’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment as he choked on whatever he’d been about to say. “Are you fu-” He cut himself off again, one hand back at the bridge of his nose, and drew in a sharp, infuriated breath. “Are you telling me you seriously didn’t notice the giant bleeding hole in your stomach?” 

Startled, Kal peered down at her abdomen. Nearly her entire front was stained with dried blood, and she could see the stark white of gauze a few inches below her sternum through, yes, the huge bloody hole in her shirt. Wow, that must have been one hell of a concussion. She had no idea when she could possibly have gotten shot, though to be fair it was hard to focus on much of anything when your brain was trying to leak out through the cracks in your skull. “Jesus, did you even look at yourself before you blew all the meds on me? If I hadn’t found another blood pack you would be dead right now, Boss!”

They were nearly nose to nose on the couch at this point, not _quite_ shouting. In a clatter that startled both of them, Dogmeat lurched up from his spot opposite the couch, nudged Kal’s leg with his nose, and trotted to the stairs. For the first time, Kal actually examined the room she’d woken up in. There was the usual shitty, dilapidated furniture, and opposite the stairs was a doorway caved in with rubble. She pushed herself to her feet, determined not to betray the dizziness that caused lest Mac start yelling again, and moved to let Dogmeat out of what she surmised were basement hatch doors. 

Rather than return to the tense environment of the couch, Kal took a seat on a stair and pulled her pack out of the heap of gear piled near the entrance. Processing that, she frowned. Mac wasn’t always gentle on gear he considered nonessential, like the scrap she foisted on him when she couldn't carry any more, but it wasn’t like him to leave his guns untended. He cleaned his guns, both his precious rifle and the handgun she’d insisted he carry for emergencies, almost religiously, but both his weapons and hers were piled by the packs. Their coats and both of his shirts had been tossed aside near there as well, all thoroughly stained with blood. Kal winced at that, and dug a new pack of cigarettes out of her bag. She felt fairly safe in assuming that the pack in her coat pocket was ruined.

\--------

Kal sat on the stairs at the other end of the room, smoking pensively into the distance, and Mac fumed. Christ. The Boss was too freaking charitable for her own good in general, but he’d never thought she was this much of a reckless moron. If she’d passed out too soon, if Dogmeat hadn’t been able to wake him, she could have died. They both could have died. What kind of idiot would use up all the meds on Mac-- who was a hired hand, no matter what he thought of the Boss-- before treating their own wounds? The head injury she'd been so focused on hadn't even bled, thanks to her stupid armor-plated cowboy hat (and he would never, ever make fun of Preston's old-lady nagging about the Boss' armor again. Well, maybe for a week or so), and thank Christ for that, because if she'd lost any more blood Mac thought she almost certainly would have died. He'd been genuinely disturbed by how dead she looked, lying there far more still than she ever was in sleep, her skin faded to the greyish brown of a dead leaf. He'd sat with her head in his lap far longer than he'd intended, just watching her breathe.

Not for the first time, Mac wished he’d had the sense to back out of this contract. It wasn’t that he and Kal didn't work well together; the dangerous thing about her wasn’t her crack-shot aim or her steel trap of a mind, it was that she had somehow conned Mac into giving a shit about her. There were rules to this merc stuff, and one of Mac’s was to never care too much about either a mark or a client. 

But then, he wasn’t sure that’s what they were anymore. Mac had given back his initial fee when the Boss helped him get the medicine for Dunc-- and god, between the hordes of ghouls and the desperate fear that his last chance to save Dunc would go wrong, he'd been virtually useless in there-- and though he still got his cut of their weekly take, he felt more like a partner than a hireling. For a moment, after they’d delivered the meds to Daisy, he’d thought the Boss was about to say something. But the moment had passed, and she’d thought better of it, or there had been nothing in the first place, and then all that shit with Kal finding out that her own kid was the monster at the head of the Institute, and now here they were in this gray area that Mac had no idea how to navigate. Waking up and thinking she’d died right on top of him had been one of the worst experiences of Mac’s life: his inability to look out for the few people in this lousy world that he gave a crap about, thrown in his face yet again. Especially given how much he owed the Boss. And while he certainly wasn’t going to complain about not dying from a gunshot wound to the chest, Mac wasn’t sure what he would have done if he’d woken up to find she’d saved his life at the expense of her own. Some hired gun he was.

The Boss had been staring into the opposite wall as she smoked, her brow furrowed. Suddenly, and uncannily like a turret locking on to a target, her gaze sharpened as it snapped over to Mac. Carefully and without letting him escape her view, Kal stubbed her cigarette out on the trashcan next to the stairs. “What,” she began, in that dangerously nonchalant tone she used to get people to open their big mouths and incriminate themselves, “did you mean by ‘before I blew all the meds on you?’”

Mac felt like an animal being stalked by a predator it knew it couldn’t escape from. Suddenly, staying hunched over on the grubby couch felt too vulnerable. He rose to his feet and faced her. “I-- look Boss…” he stumbled, trying to think of something to say that wasn’t totally pathetic. “I know I gave you my fee back and all, but I am kinda just the hired gun here.” He looked away, unwilling or unable to meet her eyes. “And-- just-- I mean, you’ve done so much sh- so much stuff for me, Boss, and if you’d died saving my stupid life--” When he looked back, his babbling cut short. Kal had materialized next to him, her grey eyes as unreadable as ever. She watched him patiently as he sighed, struggling to rein in his rambling and produce some coherent explanation. In the end, he gave up and simply said, “You scared the crap out of me, Boss.”

Kal's gaze seemed to soften, somehow, as though she'd cut through the snarl his feelings were in and understood what he'd really meant. In a tone far more gentle than he’d ever heard her use with anyone besides Dogmeat, Kal said, “Robert MacCready, you are an idiot.” Mac blinked. That was not how he’d expected that sentence to end. Some of her usual dryness returning to her tone, Kal continued. “Just the hired gun? For fuck’s sake, Mac. I would have helped you get the medicine for Duncan even if you were the biggest asshole in the Commonwealth, but do you really think I would have gone through that shitshow at Mass Pike for ‘just a hired gun’? Tabarnak, you’re oblivious! Look, I-- oh, fuck it.” With that, she seized Mac by the collar of his shirt and dragged him down to kiss him. 

Mac’s hands reflexively flew up to ward off an attack, and they hung in the air for a long moment as he processed what was actually happening. Mercifully, he figured it out before the Boss decided he wasn’t interested and stopped kissing him. His hands dropped to her shoulders, and even though he seriously considered leaving it til later, Mac decided he had to know what this was before things went any further. It wouldn’t just be physical for him. He pulled away from her, hopefully not violently enough that she would think he was outright rejecting her. She looked about ready to bolt despite his grip on her shoulders, so Mac blurted a panicked string of words instead of the carefully crafted sentence he’d been going for. 

“I-- Boss, you… _me_?” God, he was an idiot. Mac prayed he hadn’t blown his only chance and their friendship in one go.

“Yes, you moron,” Kal said, scowling up at him. It was hard to tell with the Boss, but it almost looked like she might be blushing. “So do you want to talk about this now, or later?”

“Later,” Mac said decisively, and kissed her.

**Author's Note:**

> You may have wondered at the apparent scarcity of meds in this fic. I felt like even on survival, stimpaks and whatnot are way too readily available, and I also tried to compensate for NPCs actually needing them as well.
> 
> Rating subject to change if I actually decide to write the next part.


End file.
